friends

We hope that we belong to each other but in the moments of crisis, we learn whether we are flotsam, jetsam or trash. We learn what we are capable of, when we’ll do anything to stay afloat ourselves, at any cost.

Maybe the living, breathing you. Maybe just a memory of you. A life of caveats leaves no room for surprise. No room to change the rules and I am, by nature, a rule changer. Not a breaker, as much as a changer. I like the flexibility to change the expectations. Who says some things are unforgivable or that things must go a certain way?

And I remembered then; this is the Lonely. There was something within me longing to be heard; but the one to hear was not with me.

So I let it sit, let it dwell with me for the day. Loneliness becomes a more tolerable companion as soon as you acknowledge its presence, I’ve found. I let others assume the reason for my quiet reticence that day and then in the evening, alone in the quietness of my room, I said to the Lonely, ‘Thank you for today and good night.’ I will not be any more or less lonely simply because I might one day share my Lonely with another. They will not be able to banish the lonely, but they may share it.

If we treat each other like placeholders, space fillers til something better comes along – we strip meaning from beauty and destroy our shared narratives. The difference between a seasonal transition in relationships and being Lorem Ipsum, is usually acknowledgement of the season change, thank you and goodbye.

You love fewer people than you think you do. And, if you need permission to care less about some, in order to love others better – this is it. Feel free to hit delete. Caring is enough, if caring is what you have to offer. But caring cannot get in the way of Love. You’ve got permission to gather yourself back from the hundreds of little connections draining your batteries.

In any of those circumstances, there is a season where your friend is lost to you, replaced by a creature called ‘Stranger That Knows Your Deep Secrets’. Your secrets, once shared in trust between the two of you are now the shared property of your friend and their lover. You have to re-introduce yourself and hope they are equally as trustworthy. You have to hope that they choose to love you, as you choose to love them.

Our sex-addled brains that need this truism more than anything else – that friendship between men and women, friendship itself is possibly the most vital human interaction in society today. There may come a time, though hard to imagine, when my body is too old and stiff for sex or I have simply lost the desire for it. I will be lonely then, as I am lonely now. It is my friend who quells my loneliness.

And here’s the truth hidden in the detail of a movie of a story we should pay more attention to: sometimes the best friend we’ve been looking for our whole life is just within reach, within eye contact or a phone call. We just don’t recognize it when we’re busy looking for something that feels like love (sparks) but isn’t friendship.

During one particularly difficult part of their journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand:

That’s the lesson about superhero super identities: who you reveal your deepest, secret self to is probably one of the most important decisions you can make. Those people will either be your worst enemies, or your very best friends.

In the last 20 years, the NZ Baptist church has bred and housed some amazing theologians, community leaders, creatives and philosophers. What I noticed last weekend was how they were missing from the shopfront. I saw lots of people excelling in their work – but they used to have prophets and provocateurs around them and beside them. They were the ones I called on, wrestled with and relied upon. Where have they gone?